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David Silveria Has More To Say About Korn Losing Their Trademark Sound

Last week, drummer David Silveria made it clear that he wasn’t a fan of what his former band Korn has become. He even went as far to say that 2005’s See You On The Other Side had been essentially hijacked by production team The Matrix. In a post on his Facebook page made earlier this week, though, Silveria went on to claim that the nu metal group lost their “trademark” sound well before that.

In a lengthy post, Silveria had the following to say:

“Hello people. Before I get into this post I want to be clear I’m just explaining some history from the early days of Korn. Not bashing Korn at all. I hope Korn fans will find this info interesting. To all the haters that will talk smack. Then why bother reading this? Maybe you should get some help. So here we go.

In 1991 when Korn was first writing music, it was in our rehearsal studio. When we had 6-8 songs we went and played our first show then back to our rehearsal room to keep writing. So over the next couple years we wrote songs and re-wrote songs, played numerous shows. The songs that became our first record, Korn, where written and played live and fine-tuned over a course of around two and half years. Our second and third records, Life is Peachy and Follow the Leader, were written in our rehearsal studio and rehearsed and fine-tuned over and over. We didn’t play shows while writing though. The music and vocals were written all together. This is the key point. The first three records had all kinds of strange and off time breaks in the songs. We would purposely speed up and slow down parts. Most of the weird breaks were made up by Fieldy and I. We would change the timing in the middle of songs that made no sense. One of the great things about music is there are no rules.

Fast forward to our next record, Issues. A big name producer was brought in telling us he would ‘take us to the next level.’ I immediately called bullshit. I thought we had just made three legendary records? Here is the next key point. He wanted to record the record on the digital system pro-tools. He also wanted to record everything to a click track eliminating all crazy timing changes and off time breaks and the pushing and pulling of parts. I was the only one to think this was a horrible idea. Our signature style was under attack and the guys said just listen to this ‘big time’ producer. So we started writing music. I did my thing on the drums by playing in my style. The producer immediately wanted me to simplify my playing. I said to him ‘this is not your record. I’m going to do my thing.’ The next day I get a phone call from our manager saying one of the band members says I’m being hard to work with. Seriously!! So I was being asking to be a puppet and dumb down my playing and be a good boy. I heard this enough times I finally just simplified everything. Pretty lame right? Then next it came to our attention that we were going to record all of the music before Jon even started on the vocals. That’s another major blow to our signature sound. We always wrote songs as a five piece band and made unique accents and breaks specifically to the vocals. Well there goes that unique Korn sound. Once our original way of writing was totally changed the original sound was also changed. I was disappointed.

I’ve been asked hundreds of times why our sound changed so much after Follow the Leader. Well, now you have the answer. I love the music we made after Leader, don’t get the wrong idea. It just lost so much of our unique trademark sound. I really think the fans noticed. I made several attempts to get the band to get back to the basics and write and record like we did the first three records but was met with opposition every time. I don’t know why. All I wanted to do is make better records. But the other members didn’t want to spend the extra time it takes to write the original way. But hey, I tried. When I was talking about bringing the funk back I was talking about the original writing style. I would love to get back in the rehearsal studio with the guys and resurrect the original passion and unconventional writing style and make a record that stands up to the first three. Of course, before that could happen, I would love to just sit down with guys and talk about our humble beginnings and really put things in perspective. I really hope to see you Korn fans again soon from behind my drum kit on stage with the guys. If anyone wants to post this on other sites please do so. All I ask is to be honest and post it in its entirety and not take parts out of context. I hope you true Korn fans thought this insight was interesting. Take care everyone. Talk soon :)”

The “big name” producer Silveria is referring to is Brendan O’Brien. While Issues may have started to see Korn heading in a new direction, it certainly was one of their most successful releases (going platinum pretty damn fast and producing two hit singles). And though Silveria (who has been working on a new project over the past year called Infinika) says he’d like to one day reunite with his former bandmates, its now pretty clear as to why Korn doesn’t feel the same way.

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I’m not a big fan of the kind of metamorphosis that can happen when a big producer comes in, but historically, it kinda works.

The only big example I can think of is Metallica bringing on Bob Rock for the Black Album… and from a drummer standpoint, he made Lars Ulrich change everything – for the better, I thought. The tunes were heavier, Lars played with amazing time and feel: http://youtu.be/XHAUsxBMR2Q?t=18m15s

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